Its so frustrating to see all these cool new costume ideas and implementations only to see that they're Rebirth.

[Coyotedancer]

1 hour ago, macskull said:

For what it's worth, many of the post-shutdown QoL improvements came about in response to a much smaller population while the game was still in hiding. Specifically addressing veteran levels and incarnate rewards here, but based on past developer comments some of the "streamlining" that was considered necessary at the time is now the source of significant frustration from a balance standpoint. I would not be surprised to see the incarnate-related rewards from veteran levels significantly nerfed at some point in the future.

 

And that'll be the day I stop making new characters...

Seeing the return of the old "iGrind" would, with complete honesty, be the last nail in the coffin for any enthusiasm I might have left for alting. 

[golstat2003]

22 hours ago, macskull said:

For what it's worth, many of the post-shutdown QoL improvements came about in response to a much smaller population while the game was still in hiding. Specifically addressing veteran levels and incarnate rewards here, but based on past developer comments some of the "streamlining" that was considered necessary at the time is now the source of significant frustration from a balance standpoint. I would not be surprised to see the incarnate-related rewards from veteran levels significantly nerfed at some point in the future.

 

Ehhh I doubt they do much to the solo path here for incarnates (aka threads constantly dropped when you hit 50, etc)

[Optimum_Man]

On 10/17/2021 at 11:16 PM, irishhawk said:

I stay here due to population.  Rebirth just doesn't seem to have that many players, so this is not me saying how awesome Rebirth is.  This is me wishing some of those more stable cool things were with us.

 

And no you can't have my stuff!  😛

Forgive me if I’m being dumb here, but would it be possible for HC to implement some of the more stable changes being implemented on the other rogue servers? Or would that be considered gauche?

[TheZag]

On 10/25/2021 at 8:21 AM, Optimum_Man said:

Forgive me if I’m being dumb here, but would it be possible for HC to implement some of the more stable changes being implemented on the other rogue servers? Or would that be considered gauche?

 

The changes made by homecoming have been so extensive,  including 64-bit support,  that any code made for city of heroes on other servers likely wouldnt work at all and have to be totally rewritten.  Also,  yes,  i feel that the team here prefers to use content of their own design and not that of others.  Although that is pure opinion on my part,  i dont represent the team in any way.

[Ironblade]

On 10/25/2021 at 9:21 AM, Optimum_Man said:

Forgive me if I’m being dumb here, but would it be possible for HC to implement some of the more stable changes being implemented on the other rogue servers? Or would that be considered gauche?

Possible?  Yes.  But, rather than 'gauche', I would characterize it as 'stealing'.

 

To clarify, if we're talking about something like making Arachnos costume parts available to players, sure, any server can do that regardless of what anyone else does because that's working with in-game assets that Paragon put there.

 

But if one server develops a new powerset, any other server that copies it without EXPLICIT PERMISSION would be flat-out stealing their ideas and that would be sleazy.

[Optimum_Man]

11 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

Possible?  Yes.  But, rather than 'gauche', I would characterize it as 'stealing'.

 

To clarify, if we're talking about something like making Arachnos costume parts available to players, sure, any server can do that regardless of what anyone else does because that's working with in-game assets that Paragon put there.

 

But if one server develops a new powerset, any other server that copies it without EXPLICIT PERMISSION would be flat-out stealing their ideas and that would be sleazy.

I mean I agree in theory but the irony of applying ethical standards like that to a game we’re all technically stealing by being on pirate servers just makes the whole scenario seem rather silly. Can you steal stolen property?

 

For clarity the hypothetical scenario I was referring to implied the consent of the servers that HC would be borrowing content from.

Edited October 26, 2021 by Optimum_Man
Clarity

[GraspingVileTerror]

The question of ethics is one that some members of this community have been asking for some clarity on the Homecoming Team's stance for a while, actually.

Presently, though, it is my understanding* that the Homecoming Team will not add anything to this server which isn't specifically licensed to them or licensed under CC0 ( https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/ ).  Basically, they server exists within a legally "iffy" space, and they generally try to avoid tipping the scale (which, again, makes me wonder why discord is being used in any official capacity, given its T.o.U.).

 

*Note:  I may have misunderstood my source on this matter.  I had hoped for some additional clarity in the conversation, but they've been rather quiet for months now.

 

 

As far as why Homecoming doesn't seem to be including content by outside Devs who -have- presented said content to Homecoming . . . well . . . those threads have all disappeared, and I don't know the details of what happened.

[Glacier Peak]

5 minutes ago, GraspingVileTerror said:

The question of ethics is one that some members of this community have been asking for some clarity on the Homecoming Team's stance for a while, actually.

Presently, though, it is my understanding* that the Homecoming Team will not add anything to this server which isn't specifically licensed to them or licensed under CC0 ( https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/ ).  Basically, they server exists within a legally "iffy" space, and they generally try to avoid tipping the scale (which, again, makes me wonder why discord is being used in any official capacity, given its T.o.U.).

 

*Note:  I may have misunderstood my source on this matter.  I had hoped for some additional clarity in the conversation, but they've been rather quiet for months now.

 

 

As far as why Homecoming doesn't seem to be including content by outside Devs who -have- presented said content to Homecoming . . . well . . . those threads have all disappeared, and I don't know the details of what happened.

I swear I've read a response from an HC rep directly to you about Discord on these forums, explaining why they use both, but for the life of me I can't find it in search. Am I mistaken?

[GraspingVileTerror]

You may have noticed a particularly large thread where we had a number of conversations with members of the Homecoming Team has recently vanished, @Glacier Peak.
And there's a difference between using discord as a form of outreach for the community, and using it for official matters related to development of source code.  A BIG difference.

[Glacier Peak]

1 hour ago, GraspingVileTerror said:

You may have noticed a particularly large thread where we had a number of conversations with members of the Homecoming Team has recently vanished, @Glacier Peak.
And there's a difference between using discord as a form of outreach for the community, and using it for official matters related to development of source code.  A BIG difference.

I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm saying I can't find the thread either. 

 

As for the official HC Discord, it's used for both. It's officially used for both things. 

 

Edit: Ah ha! I found what I was looking for - apologies if this comes across as specific to you @VileTerror, not my intention. I was just trying to provide evidence to what I claimed in my previous post.

 

Thread discussing past Weekly Discussions. I noted you added a confused emote to this response.

On 1/21/2020 at 10:20 AM, GM Miss said:

Hey guys, 

 

I understand your concerns but just a note that the discord (The official HC Discord) is an official outlet for us as well. It is ran by us - all gm, devs, and admins are present there and a lot of in game discussion goes on there real time. Some people just prefer that to the forums (Just as some people prefer the forums to discord).

 

The weekly discussions were a thing I started to get people active and talking about things, I apologize if you feel left out. From now on I will post our weekly topic on the forums as well (most likely on general - as its not always suggestion based. Note every week isn't in this post - sometimes its favorite IO sets, story arcs, or villain groups). It will still be on discord first - as we have a community there who gets involved with these every week as well and grew it to what it is today. This week we are currently voting on new topics to talk about in the coming weeks, so posts will start next week. Usually Sunday or Monday. (If the interest is strong enough for the first few weeks - I will keep posting here).

 

Let me know if you have any other questions. 🙂

 

Same thread moments later, also noted a confused emote from you on this response.

On 1/21/2020 at 11:43 AM, Jimmy said:

Hey all.

 

Just to reiterate what Miss said: The official Homecoming Discord is one of our primary avenues of communication, and is actually as (if not more) popular than the forums are. It's generally a lot easier for us to discuss things on Discord, which is why a lot of conversations happen there. Please do remember this is an entirely volunteer operation, so we will of course gravitate to the platforms that allows us to quickly and easily communicate with the most players possible in the very limited time that we have available to us between our day jobs and personal lives.

 

Contrary to what you may think we do read the suggestion forum frequently - and in fact, we often direct people on Discord to go and post on the suggestion forum as it's a lot easier to keep track of here - but obviously due to the aforementioned time constraints it's not practical for us to respond to most of what's posted, wheres a quick comment in Discord is much easier and less time consuming - and as such, these weekly discussions will still primarily be taking place on the Discord.

 

In sum: If you want to stay fully up to date and engaged you should be utilising both the official Discord and our forums. We use both for different purposes.

 

And just clarify what this thread is: The OP is an amalgamation of feedback and suggestions from Discord, not a plan of what we will be implementing. It is just a very valuable source of feedback (one of many sources of feedback) that we use to guide the decisions we make.

 

 

Edited October 26, 2021 by Glacier Peak

[Ruin Mage]

It should be noted (for however many times) that the stance of HC has always been to thoroughly test things, and to do their own stuff. Given the length between patches, they want to make sure each content patch is big and nearly bug free - at least egregious bugs that prevent completion of new missions etc. They also have a very different design philosophy compared to the likes of the other servers.

Rebirth is way way stricter to things-as-they-were and using things like the token/reward system from the F2P era. Yes, they have made additions beyond that. However, their approach may very well be different than HC's. On top of that, HC has a very particular pick when it comes to devs compared to the OuroDev servers. I see maybe 1 new dev every few months here versus other servers.

If they were to take ideas from other servers, it would still be done in a manner that seemed more their style. 

All of that is probably-maybe why we're not flooded in "new" stuff.

[Apparition]

Two and a half years later, Homecoming is still the only server that utilizes 64 bit, both server side and client side.  'Nuff said, really.

[TheZag]

15 minutes ago, Apparition said:

Two and a half years later, Homecoming is still the only server that utilizes 64 bit, both server side and client side.  'Nuff said, really.

 

64 bit,  time for that 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 inf cap.

[Replacement]

On 10/19/2021 at 8:37 PM, macskull said:

those are both low-population servers because they didn't spin up until around a month after Homecoming by which point they were never going to pull a significant fraction of players away.

 

Not to detract from your overall take by getting lost in the weeds, but I definitely think it had more to do with being the server with like 20 extra power sets proliferated and a new AT (even if people love to crap on Sentinel now, it drew a lot of initial interest).

 

My opinions change when I think about why it's maintained a lead but that's long and boring.

[Dazl]

Homecoming did benefit from being the place to join when the servers went public. Sort of like twitter, they captured the bulk of the player base. So even though there are alternatives, they just don’t have the numbers HC has. When playing any MMO you’re  going to want to have a decent population in the game. HC has managed to hold a population because many people like what they are doing running the game.

[macskull]

7 hours ago, Dazl said:

Homecoming did benefit from being the place to join when the servers went public. Sort of like twitter, they captured the bulk of the player base. So even though there are alternatives, they just don’t have the numbers HC has. When playing any MMO you’re  going to want to have a decent population in the game. HC has managed to hold a population because many people like what they are doing running the game.

It's also kind of a self-sustaining cycle - when a player discovers CoH is back (or discovers it for the first time) they're likely to only hear about HC because it has more of an online presence, and if they are aware of the existence of other servers they're still probably going to gravitate toward HC because of its larger population. There would need to be a significant player migration in order to change any of that.

[ForeverLaxx]

3 hours ago, macskull said:

It's also kind of a self-sustaining cycle - when a player discovers CoH is back (or discovers it for the first time) they're likely to only hear about HC because it has more of an online presence, and if they are aware of the existence of other servers they're still probably going to gravitate toward HC because of its larger population. There would need to be a significant player migration in order to change any of that.

Kind of the same problem with Red Side, but applied to the server level.

[carroto]

I didn't start on HC when I found out the game was back.  I looked at a list of servers and their descriptions and picked one that looked good.  It had very low population but I was willing to work with it.  The thing that killed it for me was zero activity on the market.  With no way to buy things there that would mean grinding for reward merits to buy every single thing, which would take bloody ages for each character.

 

So I went looking again, tried HC, and found that the devs here did a bunch of things to ensure the market was healthy, including seeding items as necessary.  Then I found some of the other QoL improvements so I stuck around and haven't looked back.

 

So for me I'm not sure how much it was that HC had the higher population.  Sure that no doubt helps the market function well, but if the people running that other server had ensured the market worked there I might never have left.

[Zappalina]

On 10/19/2021 at 11:33 AM, Cobalt Arachne said:

If you're referring specifically to patch notes for the Page 3 content update going to Brainstorm for public testing, Our goal is November.

Today's small patch was a fix for the Sinister Summoner badge art at low graphic settings and reducing Black Whip to an AV class enemy so he is quicker to defeat for players who want to get that badge on large numbers of their characters.

A forum post for today's patch notes should be coming shortly.

Because in my brain Page 3 is turning into something, it is like the new version of "Freem"  I made this.